Morning in the Land of Nod
by Zeitgeist84
Summary: Harry won the battle, but lost the only war that ever mattered. Fifteen years later, he sets out to find absolution. Post-Apocalyptic AU.
1. Parts I-III

**Disclaimer:** Do I give off the impression that I own this series? If so, I'm terribly sorry for misleading you.

 **Summary** : Harry won the battle, but lost the only war that ever mattered. Fifteen years later, he sets out to find absolution. Post-Apocalyptic AU. Inspired by the older Mad Max movies.

* * *

Morning in the Land of Nod

* * *

Part One: The Wasteland

* * *

He stepped over a corpse, long picked clean by the vultures and maggots, and thought three words:

The Wasteland consumes.

It consumed life, love, hopes, dreams, and regurgitated the infinite myriad of human emotions into fine grains of white sand. That was all the Wasteland ever did. It ate, and ate; it never knew anything but hunger.

No one truly knew what happened; the world had ended and they were all still here.

There had been a few frantic years, trying to save something, anything, but soon everything succumbed to the Wasteland. It was a fitting end.

Something snapped under his boots, and he grimaced at the sight of a child's femur snapped in half. They had called it the Valley of the Bones; now he knew why. Walking sedately and desperately ignoring each snap and crack under his stride, he made his way through the valley, toward a cliffside. Other wanderers had told him that he would find what he was seeking here: a purpose, a dream, a new life.

But as far as the eye could see, there was only death. Death and sand.

A world of fire, and ash.

There was something else, however. Something electric in the air. It was the faint buzzing sound of magic, he knew it. He could hear magic, smell magic, even _taste_ magic. He let out a low grunt. The raiders and looters were never any trouble, but magic? Magic was darkness, magic was danger, magic was the senseless trek into a thousand deaths. He reached to his side, where an old but faithful short-barreled shotgun was holstered, and took comfort in fingering the polished handle.

For a long while, all he heard was the rattle of his gun and the crunch of his footsteps.

And when he came to the cliffside, he wasn't entirely surprised to see an archway lead out of the hot sun into the oppressive dark of a cavern. A rush of cool air hit him upon entering, and the dark cavern immediately brightened as he stepped inside. Lighted by stalactites and stalagmites, he found himself standing high above a grotto of cool, life-giving water, on a stone bridge.

He resisted the urge to simply dive into the water: _It might be too shallow,_ thought a part of him, knowing falling that far would likely kill him, _who cares, either way works,_ thought another. And while the thought of suicide was a constant companion to anyone roaming the Wasteland, he hadn't survived this long by thinking like that.

So he pressed on and reached the other end of the stone bridge, where the murk opened up into a long, dim passage, stacked to the heavens on either side by solid rock. He freed the firearm from its holster, taking care to keep one finger up and off the trigger, and then stalked his way down the corridor. Silence reigned supreme, broken only for the sound of dripping water. The darkness grew and grew, until quite suddenly, a burst of light came some forty paces up ahead, at the end of the long corridor.

He stepped through, and walked into a antechamber that smelled of wet moss and strong incense. The moss made sense, half the rocks in the cavern were overgrown with it, and the incense was soon explained as he came to a landing over crudely fashioned stone steps. Down at the base was a long sanctuary, lit by a row of archaic torches, and a coterie of robed figures knelt at the basin of a shallow pool of water in prayer. At the centre of the manmade pond sat an altar, and next to that, a throne where an old man awaited, infirm and slouched.

The wary drifter stood at the edge of shrine, and looked a while.

"Come closer, my child," a voice soon echoed through the chamber. The robed figures turned back, and all eyes landed on him.

Unsure of what else he could do, he complied, and stepped down the stairs slowly, one hand still clutching the handle of his weapon. One of the robed figures rushed toward him and when he reached the base of the stairs, she stood in front of him with outstretched arms:

"There will be no weapons before The Prophet, heathen!" she hissed, and produced a sharpened, sculpted stick to his throat. He stepped backward, fingers tightening around the stock.

A chuckle came from the throne. "My dear Adda, if he wanted to kill me, he would have done it already. Let him pass, and leave him his weapons. A show of good faith."

Adda clucked her tongue in annoyance, but let him go through. He moved past her like a shadow, but his eyes remained on her long after she was deemed to be no threat. But he slid by her without fuss and soon found his feet had carried him to the throne, a primitive thing fashioned out of the cavern stone and, behind that chair, stood an altar of gold, adorned with the bones of the dead. There was the slow sound of movement, and the one in the throne shifted forward in an ungainly manner, nearly flopping forward to rest his gnarled arms on his thighs.

"Is it done?" the old man asked with a creaking, shuddering voice.

He nodded back, and reached for a sack tied to his waist. Unhooking it from his belt, he stopped by the water's edge, and tossed it over the water to the throne. The old man, also called The Prophet, made a strangled noise caught somewhere between delight at having received what he wanted and disapproval with having it thrown at him. For a man so ancient and sickly, he moved spryly as he untied the sack and unwrapped a severed head from it; a red-eyed, snake-lipped head, bald at the crest, a stump of dried blood and gore at the throat.

"Wonderful," The Prophet sighed, stroking one of the cold cheeks, " _beautiful_. Have you the rest of him?"

"No," came the reply, his own voice sounded like crinkling old parchment. "The rest of him rots in the wastes."

The Prophet breathed out disapprovingly. "Ah, such a shame. But no matter. The eyes will be more than enough," he relaxed and leaned back into the throne. "How did you do it?"

"It was just as you said: the curse that called the storms weakened him permanently. He was hidden at the stronghold you told me of, but he could do nothing to defend himself when I came."

"You never told me, wanderer, so tell me now, what is your name, that we might drink to it at supper?" The Prophet asked knowingly.

"Ron," he replied; his was face shadowed in the dim light, though his emerald eyes burned brightly.

The Prophet looked amused. "A lie. But a harmless one. You have done me a great service, let alone what you've done for yourself by ending this... this thing," the old man sneered at the head. "What do you seek? If I have the power to will it, I will do my utmost."

"They say you're a seer, that your powers can be called upon at will," the green-eyed man replied, "so tell me a tale."

"Whose tale?"

"My own."

The Prophet laughed gaily. "Are you sure that is what you wish? You've just ridded yourself of one prophecy, and now you wish to saddle yourself with another?"

"Tell me a tale," repeated the green-eyed man.

"As you wish," said The Prophet, and with the claws of his right hand, he opened the one of the lids of the severed head, reached in, grasped something, and tore it out. Without even a second look at the red eye, The Prophet shoved it headlong into his mouth and grinned as he chewed.

The other man sat patiently and waited as The Prophet began to glow, his eyes rolled back into his head, and that electrostatic feel of magic came crackling to life once more within the antechamber:

"A child of darkness, beset on all sides by wickedness, and in the darkness and among the wicked for some time longer yet you will be. You will know pain to the very ends of the earth, to a spring followed by winter, but there is a chance..."

"A chance?" the green-eyed man asked. "A chance for what?"

"Ab... _Absolution_. Go East. As far east as you can. To a place where The Wastes end, the trees bloom eternal, and water remains. Seek the Queen of Whispers. Along that path, you shall find what you seek."

The green-eyed man eyed the elder man. "East, then."

The glow dissipated and The Prophet nodded. "East. But be wary."

A curious, emerald gaze fell on The Prophet; the wanderer had been in the process of standing up, but stilled at the seer's words. He said nothing; he waited for The Prophet to continue:

"Revenge is cold, and ruthless, and it is coming for you."

The green-eyed man stayed quiet, motionless, and then he swept away quickly, the soles of his boots were oddly silent against the stone floor of the temple.

He didn't stay for supper, instead choosing to cross that valley of dry bones once more, climbing upward and outward until a small black blip appeared on the horizon, just below a fearsome orange sun. Two looters sniffed nearby it; he fired two warning shots into the air. They beat feet toward a mountain in the distance.

Nothing was gone when he arrived; he had been lucky, had he been a few minutes late, the car would have been picked clean. Getting inside, he sat and rested his eyes a moment, and nearly fell asleep.

It was the dreams that woke him, in the end. He dreamed of them every time he closed his eyes. Of the girl with brown hair and the boy with red. He had long since forgotten how many years it had been since he'd last seen them, and realized they had likely long since died, but he still remembered their laughter. He missed them, the girl with her soft, posh giggles and the boy with his loud, boisterous guffaws. But they were naught more than dust and wind, one of the many grains of sand and ash that gusted about listlessly under the hot sun.

The engine rumbled. He had many miles to go.

So he pressed down, and the old girl trundled softly down a dune.

* * *

Part Two: By Any Other Name

* * *

They called him The Raggedy Man.

He was a passing shadow, a drifter: one of many in the new, wild world. The Raggedy Man in his raggedy car, the squib who hunted down Dark Lords. He drove, crossing dune after dune, from makeshift town to makeshift town, saving the innocent, helping the disenfranchised, finding the lost.

In reality, he was little like the tales, which were a vestige of the days when he still thought the world could be saved. He still traveled, but the lost and hopeless remained lost and hopeless. He kept far away from settlements, only venturing into them when he absolutely needed supplies. And most of all, he avoided people where he could; people were trouble. Like this, he traveled before he met The Prophet, and, like this, he traveled afterward.

For a short time, at least.

A week into his sojourn east, The Raggedy Man drove into a town situated in the basin of what was once the Mediterranean Sea, and stopped at one of the many drive-bars popping up all over what was left of the world. People needed food, needed drink, needed gasoline, but no one was willing to leave a vehicle unattended, not even for a scant minute. The Raggedy Man was no different: all it took was one enterprising thief; losing his car in the new world was like losing a house, a job, and a means of mobility at the same time in the old.

So he drove up, and a girl much too young be working in the hot sun came loping toward his car. "What can I get for you, Mister?" she asked with an accent very much like his own, and as much careless energy someone of her age could possibly muster.

The man didn't immediately respond, staring instead at her strikingly familiar auburn hair and brown eyes hidden underneath a pair of slightly crooked spectacles.

"Mister?" she asked again.

"What have you got?" he asked quickly, a bit too quickly for his liking.

"Water and Meatloaf surprise, everything a growing boy needs!"

"The meatloaf actually beef?" he grunted, and stared at her seriously. The implication was not lost upon the girl:

"What a horrible thing to say!" she gasped and worried her lower lip a moment, before she continued: "We're not like the looters or the corpsers out in The Wasteland, Mister; we serve only good food and clean water, that's our _guarantee_!"

The Raggedy Man's emerald eyes sparkled with amusement. "Well, I'll take it then."

"You won't be disappointed," the girl beamed widely, "that'll be three rounds please!"

"Rifle?"

"Pistol."

The green-eyed man nodded and reached for his sidearm, an old World War II-era handgun that he popped the magazine out of and removed three bullets. Turning back to the girl, he held out the bullets to her, but she seemed to take notice of something else entirely:

"Are you... are you a wizard, Mister?" she asked, hushed, and with wonder-filled eyes, staring at the wand strapped to the underside of his outstretched arm, which was normally covered by the sleeve of the jacket he wore.

"No," he answered quickly and gave the girl the rounds, _not anymore_ , he finished the sentence silently. The girl's face fell at the news:

"Oh. I'm sorry for... I-I'll just go now," she said, knowing she had hit a sore spot.

He watched on impassively as the girl scampered away, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that he knew her. She couldn't have been more than ten years old; he couldn't place the face, yet he knew her.

It wasn't long before the girl came back, much more subdued now with a plate of meatloaf. Though, to call it meatloaf was a severe overstatement; it was more of a pasty brown mush, unappealing, but undeniably filling. The once lively girl handed off the plate, raked a hand through her curly hair, and bit her lip in contemplation of something. Seeming to think better of it, she made to turn and leave.

"Wait," said the man in the car. The girl stopped, and turned to the man, who unceremoniously dug into the meatloaf:

"Yes, Mister?" she asked.

"What's your name, girl?"

"Erm... it's, erm, Rose. It's Rose," she said, taken aback. Few probably ever stopped to talk to her. People always ordered their food and shooed her away as quickly as possible. In The Wasteland, children were a liability, after all.

The Raggedy Man nodded, and gave her a smile as he took a bite of the loaf. "Pretty name. You... live here?"

"Uh-huh."

"With your parents?"

"No. Well, yes. I mean, I live here. But not with my parents. Why do you want to know?" she asked with a suspicious glance.

 _So, an orphan, then._

"Relax, sprog. If I wanted to hurt you, you'd be hurt."

"I didn't ask if you wanted to hurt me," the girl returned with a haughty glance, reminding him starkly of another girl he once knew, "I asked why you wanted to know."

"I..." he started, "I don't know. Just curious, I reckon. Don't get a lot of chances to talk to people these days."

Rose gave a lopsided grin. "That's because you're out on the road. There are plenty of people to talk to in towns."

She received a bark of a laugh in response. "I'm not exactly cut out for domestic living."

"That's what they all say. If you stay here for more than a few days, you might think differently."

"If you say so, sprog. If you say so."

He promptly shooed the girl away and made for the edge of town, to gather some food and supplies for the long journey ahead. The town was the only one for miles with a hunter's shop, prepping any and all would-be adventurers for their pilgrimage into wild, cursed lands. They carried knives, guns, gas, even new-formed bullets, not at all like the ones from the old days everyone used for currency.

"What can I do for you, stranger?" asked the man behind the counter.

"Bullets, petrol, a lighter, non-perishable foods," replied The Raggedy Man shortly, keeping an eye on his car outside the dilapidated shop. "Maybe some grog, too" he added quickly.

"All kinds here."

He was in and out quickly, ready for a night's sleep in the car and getting ready for the next leg of his journey east. But, as he drove by the old shack he had stopped at for his lunch, The Raggedy Man heard a commotion behind it. So he stopped his car and stepped out, heading for a back alleyway, where he spotted a woman and two men surrounding a small figure.

It was Rose, the girl he had stopped to talk to. She stood, back against the wall, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Freak!" shouted the older woman. "Whore! Witch!" she was an ugly thing, old and wrinkly, robbed of life and spirit by the world. All that remained was a bitter, vengeful hag, with hair like ash, eyes like the dead, and a voice like a harpy's.

She slapped the girl. The Raggedy Man picked up his pace and un-holstered the revolver at his side.

"You think you can hide among us, but we know better. Your kind _destroyed_ the world! And now you have the gall to come here, to be part of _our_ world!?" Rose jerked back at the spittle and vitriol that flew into her face.

The Raggedy Man pulled back the hammer.

The woman slapped the girl again, and she stumbled back with tears in her eyes.

He fired a warning shot.

The trio whirled around and faced in the direction where the shot had come from. "Hey!" said The Raggedy Man. "Have you a problem with the girl?"

"She's a witch," the woman said haughtily.

"A witch!" agreed one of the men, as though that settled the matter.

The Raggedy Man took aim, and fired once more. This time, the bullet whizzed by the woman's silvery hair, even clipping a few strands. A second shot rang out, nearly in succession, and struck one of the men, a bald-headed and heroin-addled one, in the right arm. He stumbled over and clutched at the bleeding arm with a weak cry.

"Leave her alone," said the drifter. "Don't come back, or the next shot will kill."

The three wasted no time in bolting, and left the man and his charge alone in the alley. He bent to eye level:

"They didn't hurt you, did they, sprog?"

The auburn-haired girl sniffled. "Only a little," she smiled weakly, rubbing a flaming-red cheek.

He sighed. "Does this happen often?"

"Some people try. Usually Old Sam never lets them get this far."

"Old Sam?"

"The man who owns the drive-bar. He's very kind."

"And where's he?"

"He's sick. His wife has taken over the bar right now."

"His wife?"

"The woman you scared."

The Raggedy Man grimaced. She was alone in the world, abused, and scared, and she reminded him so very much of a little boy locked in a cupboard, whispering out hoarse prayers to any god that would hear him. He wiped away a tear streak from her face with a gloved thumb and readjusted her spectacles, which had been knocked askew:

"Why? Why does she do this to you?"

"She hates magic," replied Rose. "her son died and she's very sad about that. She thinks magic killed him. And since she knows... knows my mum and dad could do magic... Old Sam used to stop her, but now he's sick..." she trailed off, uncertain.

"Sounds like a terrible place to live," the drifter commented quietly.

"It's not so bad," said the girl with a wide, fake smile. "I get food and a nice, warm place to sleep every night."

"But do you want to stay here?"

The question hung between the two like a sheet of iron, and Rose became very still, as her eyes worked unseeingly and her mouth moved soundlessly. "No," she said at length. "I don't want to stay here."

She confirmed it, and now, The Raggedy Man had to pose the question, had to broach the subject. His mind was in conflict. One voice told him _'take the girl! She needs your help!'_ , while another spoke of her being a liability in the wasteland, and another still sure that the girl would say no. But then he saw this wholly innocent child, locked in a cupboard as he had been for years, and his mind was quite suddenly made up:

"You want to see the road?"

Rose looked away shyly, as if contemplating, and then, looking as stoic as a Greek philosopher might, turned back and spoke.

* * *

Part Three: The Road

* * *

"Why do regular folk hate magic?" Rose asked from the passenger's seat.

"They think magic destroyed the world," the man replied.

"Did it?"

Her companion sighed. "In a manner of speaking, yes."

Inquisitive brown eyes turned on him. "How did it happen?"

"It started with two men: a wise, old man and a foolish, young boy," The Raggedy Man said. "The fool wanted power, the wise man cautioned against it. But the fool wouldn't listen, and went across the world, gathering knowledge and power until he became a wise man in his own right."

Rose nodded, following along as the car ripped past another dune.

"But becoming wise doesn't change that you were once a fool, and he tried to use his broken wisdom to take over the world. He took what he wanted and killed anyone in his way."

"He sounds like an awful man."

"He was. He killed, and killed, until another little boy was born, prophesied to defeat him. They fought for many years, but in their last battle the fool who became wise called down a storm, a terrible one that destroyed half the world and covered the rest in sand. Just as you see now."

He indicated the long hills of yellow sand that stretched as far as the eye could see, which sparkled beautifully in the evening glow.

"What happened to the fool who became wise?"

"Well, he finally learned he was only a man: He lost his magic as payment for the storm, and fled to a castle where he lived in solitude and thought on his mistakes for a very long time. He died only recently."

"And the little boy?"

The Raggedy Man paused. "He lost his magic, too. But no one knows how he lost it, or where he went, or why he disappeared, No one knows how to get him back."

"Wow," said Rose.

"Quite a tale, isn't it?"

"Yes, mum and dad would never tell me what happened, how things turned this way, though I'm sure they knew."

"Why wouldn't they?" The Raggedy Man asked.

"Said I was too young."

The Raggedy Man snorted. "Hardly anyone is 'too young' anymore."

Rose fell quiet, and watched the long road of packed sand. They stayed like this, in comfortable, contemplative silence for several long minutes, until, quite suddenly, she turned back and posed the question The Raggedy Man had been asked only recently:

"What's your name?"

He grunted. "Does it matter?"

"Yes. You asked me my name, and I answered. Now I'm asking you yours," she retorted in that precocious way of hers.

The Raggedy Man was quiet for a short while, and turned to the auburn-haired girl. "Harry. My name is Harry."

"Harry," said Rose. "It's a nice name. My mum and dad knew a Harry once."

"Did they?"

"Mum always said he had the prettiest green eyes. She always tried to make daddy jealous, but he'd always laugh. Hey!" she exclaimed. " _You_ have green eyes! Did you know my mum and dad?"

She was a smart child, but still a child.

"Probably not, sprog," said Harry with a sigh.

"Don't call me that."

"What?"

"My name's _Rose_. Call me Rose."

Harry stared at her, unnervingly. "Right then, sprog."

Rose huffed and crossed her arms: " _Honestly_!" she muttered loudly, at the very edge of annoyance. "Fine then, _old man_."

Harry smirked.

* * *

They drove a long time, only ever stopping to leave the car when nature called. In the wasteland, the roads were infinite and endless, stretching in every direction fathomable. They ate in the car, slept in the car, crossed dunes in the car, lived life in the car. Surprisingly, Rose took to the life of the wandering nomad, eager to learn the ways of survival from a man who had been doing such for years. She was only mildly disappointed when Harry refrained from teaching her how to use a firearm, citing she was 'still too young'. Rose refrained from pointing out the hypocrisy of it all.

But that choice never deterred her, nor did it lessen the potential Harry saw in her, for a fortnight after Harry met Rose was the first time she showed aptitude with magic. It had been a hot day, like all the rest, and the girl asked him for water:

"We don't have much left," replied Harry, "we'll have to ration it."

Rose sighed. "You know, mum and dad took me to a town once that had so much water, I could scarcely believe it."

"Did they?"

"It was somewhere north. There was no sand. And there was water, lakes, everywhere!"

"Really?" Harry asked, splitting his attention between her and the road.

"Some of them even shot out water from the middle, like this!" she splayed out her arms up and wide, mimicking an explosive torrent of water shooting up into the sky. It caused Harry a chuckle:

"What you saw was a geyser," replied the man, "though I wasn't aware any still existed."

"It was real," said Rose earnestly.

"I believe you," he didn't believe her. It must have been a dream, or something she had seen in an old book.

The ride continued comfortably, until Harry spotted something on the horizon, squatting at the crest of one of the many dunes. Stopping the car, he reached over Rose into the dash and pulled a pair of binoculars out:

"Shit," he murmured lowly.

Rose whirled to him, alarmed. "What is it?"

"Raiders," he said slowly. "Get into the back seat, cover yourself up with the blankets there. Don't come out until I say you can." Rose nodded, and scrambled through the gap between his seat and hers, and scurried into the back seat, where she promptly swaddled herself in the rough, scratchy material of their blankets. Once sure Rose was hidden, Harry inched forward, mindful of the three rust-hued cars waiting for him.

"What are you going to do?" Rose whispered from underneath the covers.

"There's a chance they just don't want us on their turf," said Harry, "I'll take a detour and go around, see if they leave us alone, then."

But when Harry turned, the rust-coloured cars thundered down the dune, rapidly closing the distance to them. Cursing, Harry flipped up a red nozzle on the dashboard, and flipped the switch. A choking roar came from the front of car as it sped through the sand. Rose screamed as the car jumped over a bank and veered onto a makeshift road, created over years of light traffic. Harry looked back, he hadn't lost any of them.

"Damn it," he growled. "I need you back up here."

"Are you sure?" asked Rose, throwing back the covers.

"They catch up to us, and a couple of blankets aren't going to do you any good."

Rose didn't need any more convincing, she sprang up and clambered over the gap between the seats, mindful of the gearbox. "What do you need me to do?"

Harry double-tapped the accelerator to the floor, activating a makeshift device that would clamp down on the accelerator even when he wasn't pressing on it. "Hold the wheel, keep us going straight."

Rose gulped.

Harry captured her eyes with his own and tried to convey all his belief into his next words. "You'll do fine, sprog."

Shakily, she nodded, and leaned across the gear lever to grasp the steering wheel with her small hands just as Harry's bigger ones left it. Not wasting any time, Harry reached below the driver's seat a grasped a handle, solid and wooden.

 _Crunch_!

A great shockwave went through the cabin as the cars behind the duo rammed theirs. Rose cried out as she momentarily lost control of the wheel and Harry lost grip of the handle. He rushed up to grasp hold of the wheel, but found Rose had already recovered, and nodded at him resolutely. When the second ram hit them, Harry and Rose had braced for it, and they kept composure.

Harry leaned below and grasped the handle once more, pulling out the duo's best chance of survival. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw three evil-looking vehicles, all spikes and rust, one moving in to ram them from the side. Quickly disengaging the accelerator, Harry slammed on the brakes and waited for the first of the assailants to come into view, he raised the handle, aimed for the window of the first car, and fired twice: the first weakened the glass, and the second punched right through the windscreen.

A shower of blood and brain painted the car an ostentatious red, but they only saw it for a moment, as the dead man, as dead men were wont to do, quickly lost control of the car, and veered off the road into an oncoming sand bank.

"One down," murmured Harry, as he unfolded the sawed-off barrel, turned it 90 degrees, and let two smoking shotgun shells fall out, before reaching around Rose to the glovebox, where he found two more shells to replace it with.

"There's still two more!" confirmed Rose.

Harry took the wheel once more, veering right as the dull roar of the engine quieted only slightly. "Keep calm," he said, right before the cabin shook violently.

This time, Harry rammed one of the other cars, hitting the back left fender of the raider's rust bucket, right where the gas tank should have been, by Harry's guess. He was proven right when he spotted golden-brown liquid dripping from the spiked back fender of the car:

"Sprog," he said as calmly as he could, "in the back, there's a bottle of whiskey. Brown liquid, glass bottle. Do you see it?"

Rose turned around and looked, eventually nodding. "I see it!" She reached over and pulled it from beneath the back seat.

"Good," Harry said, relieving her of the bottle. "Now tear me a strip off one of the blankets." Rose did so, and handed it to him. "Now take the wheel again."

Harry uncorked the hooch, took the torn strip of fabric, and covered it in poorly-made alcohol, before shoving it back into the bottle. He reached into his pocket and rifled around a moment, before finding what he was looking for, a small, handmade lighter.

"Come on, you bastard," Harry murmured lowly as he repeatedly failed to create a flame. He thought for a moment that Rose might scold his language, but perhaps even she could see that now was not the time. The car took another rocking blow from their friends in the other car, but Rose's hands remained steady. Harry looked out the window and saw the fuel tank really losing gasoline now.

So he turned back to his task and went about it with renewed vigour, vigour which very quickly paid off when he lit a flame. Laughing gaily, he set the rag on fire and waited a moment for the cars to line up before throwing the bottle. It crashed against the back fender and immediately spewed up in a blaze.

The explosion was something to behold.

But so was searing pain, as some of the resulting explosive fire whipped through the open window and managed to singe Harry just above his right eyebrow. Though, used to pain, he opted to ignore it, and retake the wheel from Rose.

"Why are they after us!?" Rose shouted frantically, as the third and final car came very close and nudged the back end of their car.

"I have an idea," Harry replied, but said nothing else, leaving his auburn-haired charge looking on in confusion as they avoided a sandbank with a sharp yank left of the steering wheel.

As they came back round the long drift of sand, the two found the final car right alongside them, and Harry found himself facing the wrong end of a gun not unlike his own. Time slowed, and he acted purely on instinct, feet going from accelerator to brakes with lightning speed, and just as the shotgun fired, the car slowed enough that the pellets only took out a chunk of the doorframe, and not Harry's head, where it was aimed.

That, however, brought it's own problem, as the usually growling engine of Harry's vehicle sputtered and died. He returned the gear lever to neutral and tried to start the car again, only to find the beast completely unresponsive.

"Shit," he murmured appropriately, as the last enemy slowed, and turned his car round.

"What is it?" Rose cried worriedly.

Harry clucked his tongue. "Clutch went; car's stalled."

Rose didn't need to be a motoring expert to realise this was a terrible situation to be in, especially right now, as the pincer-like nose of the raiders' car came bearing down toward the hood of Harry's old Ford. Her parents never seemed to believe in a higher power, her mother dismissive of it and her father bemused by the idea entirely, and Rose wasn't sure if she herself believed, but she remembered that Old Sam had believed in a god. And if nothing else, she believed in Old Sam, so she prayed fiercely to whatever god that would listen to save herself and the only other person besides Sam in the whole cold, cruel world who had ever shown her an ounce of kindness.

She thought of the raider's rusty old bucket, crumpled in on itself, lifted and tossed over Harry and Rose, and crash in a heap behind them.

And when Rose opened her eyes, the enemy car only meters away from them, her wish came true, and something quite extraordinary happened: water. A veritable geyser of water shot up, vicious and stabbing, right into the raider's car, spearing into it and lifting it over the stalled Ford, as it sailed in the air, crashed, and tumbled some ten feet away.

Harry, surprised and amazed by the turn of events, turned to give Rose a wide-eyed look, who returned it with the same expression. But, while he was shocked, Harry knew he couldn't let their good fortune go to waste:

"Stay here," Harry ordered Rose, and kicking open the door to his Ford, he stepped out, and reached under the driver's seat to pull out another weapon: long and silver, this revolver would kill anything that moved.

So he stomped out into the sand and toward the other car, now laying upside down, and hideously wet for the middle of the desert. He came to the front of the car, and fired once, instantly killing whoever was in the passenger's seat, and, coming to the driver's side, he wrenched the door open, and dragged a bloodied and bruised man out, kicking and screaming. He pulled the man clear of the car and let him flop on the sand, before putting a boot firmly on a broken leg, applying just enough pressure to let the raider know Harry could make it hurt much more than it already did. With a grim look, Harry then leveled the revolver at the other man's head:

"Raiders," he surmised quickly, "acting on your own, or were you hired?"

The raider, an ugly, bald-headed one with a scar over his left eye, smiled and revealed rotted teeth. "I think you know the answer to that one, mate," he said.

Harry blinked. "Still?"

"Always. To the ends of the earth and the last second of time. You've still a debt to pay, Mr. Potter. And the boss intends to collect."

"He's tried before. No luck."

"But each time closer. Some sins, you can't run away from."

"Is that why he sent you? To threaten me?"

"To warn you. Retribution is coming, and it's coming soon. Forty innocent lives dead and there will be a reckoning."

Harry snorted, amused that a hired killer would lecture him about righteousness, and retribution:

"You? Moralising? _Quaint_."

A sigh, a squeeze, and blackpowder fire; a gunshot rang out in silence, as a few grains of lonely sand shifted away in the wind.

* * *

With fresh tankards of gas and little preamble, Harry soon returned to Rose, having scrounged what little he could from the assassin's car. The girl had remained still, watching in amazement at the patch of sand where, only minutes ago, a geyser of water had erupted. He entered the Ford silently, and started it up without a word. They drove in silence for what seemed like hours, until the sun was nearly setting, and the two found an empty little cavern just above the sand.

Just as quickly as he had come in, Harry turned the car off and exited the car, leaving Rose unsure of what to do.

"Come on out," Harry called to the girl, who jumped at his voice, but immediately complied, slipping out from the car.

Harry inspected her, and Rose shifted under the man's academic gaze, but reached an entirely new level of bemusement when Harry pulled back the left sleeve of his leather jacket and showed her a polished piece of wood strapped to his arm:

"You know what this is?" he asked.

Dumbly, Rose nodded. "Did... did I do something wrong today?"

The Raggedy Man's harsh green eyes softened the tiniest bit. "No, sprog. You might have done something very right," he said, reaching over to the wand holster, gripping the short rod, and pulling it out. Once he did so, Harry offered the polished stick to the girl, who balked at it:

"What do you want me to do with that?" she asked nervously.

"You said your parents were magic."

"Y-yes."

He offered the wand once more. "Then you might be, as well. Take the wand."

The auburn-haired girl gulped at her guardian's serious tone, but, despite her trepidation, she took the wand and immediately marveled at the _feeling_ of it all. A tingling warmth shot up her arm, and this piece of holly wood seemed to sing at the prospect of being used once again. But, more than all that, was the indescribable sense of completeness that enveloped her when she gripped the wand, as though Rose had just discovered a limb she never knew she'd been missing.

Harry offered her a rare smile. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

"Uh-huh!" Rose hummed happily.

"That's good. Now aim the wand forward and watch me," Harry said, making a few uncomplicated swishes of a dipstick he'd been using as a makeshift wand. "After you do that, say 'Aguamenti' loud and clearly."

Rose nodded and did exactly as he asked, clearly intoning " _Aguamenti_."

Nothing happened.

Surprised, Rose tried again. Still nothing. She tried once more. Nothing. Not even a shadow of the spell she'd heard her mother and father do numerous times when they had been on the run.

"Swish, pull, then flick," Harry coached calmly next to her.

She followed the man's instructions to the letter, and still, nothing happened. Unbidden, tears sprang to Rose's eyes; she felt useless, unable to live up to her parents', who could have done this spell in their sleep, and, more importantly, unable to live up to Harry's expectations. However, for a man who had spent the better part of a decade living life as a beast on the far edges of the world, The Raggedy Man proved himself infinitely patient:

"Sprog, look at me," he said, and Rose found herself staring at his grizzled face, crouched a few feet away so that they stood eye-to-eye, "Don't get frustrated. All of us started out this way," he finished, somehow having managed to calm her.

Rose closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and opened them once more as she exhaled. Calmer, and feeling more resolute than she had in the beginning, Rose aimed the holly wand down toward the entrance of the cave, and swished, pulled and flicked.

The words came easily. " _Aguamenti_."

And lo, water flowed.

It was a weak stream, pitifully dribbling from the tip of the wand, but it was water nonetheless, and a great boon to both Harry and Rose, who had been conserving what little water they had from their last stop-over in a town.

Harry grinned. "Well, it looks like we have us a little witch. There may be hope for you yet, sprog."

Rose flushed at the compliment, unused to being praised as she was. While her mother and father had done it frequently, she had missed the warm feeling of accomplishment ever since they both died. Old Sam was kind, but he never praised a soul; it just wasn't in his nature. So, receiving such acclaim was incredibly flattering to Rose.

Harry rushed over to grab his canteen of water, and Rose's as well, filling them up from the wand's endless stream, and told Rose all about the wonderful world of magic. It was a world of mystery and intrigue, and, more than that, it was a world where Rose could be anything she wanted.

She liked that idea.

"Let's get to work on supper," Harry said after both canteens had been filled. "There'll be more than enough magic to learn tomorrow."

Rose went to sleep in the backseat of the Ford on pins and needles that night. It was the first night in a very long time that she couldn't wait for tomorrow.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** This is a three-shot fic that I started writing about four days ago, with the challenge of trying to finish the fic before the new year. As of right now, I hope to get the second chapter out by Christmas, and the final one by New Year's Eve, then it's back to working on Midnight Blues and So Spoke the Idol God.

 **Chapter Note:**

 **Mad Max:** This fic takes rather obvious inspiration from the Mad Max series, due in no small part to the fact that I could see (toxic politics aside) a young Mel Gibson playing a slightly older Harry in a heartbeat. There are several further references to Max, from the vehicular combat, to the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun Harry uses, the fact that he calls Rose 'sprog', which is supposed to be the name of Max's son, the nickname "Raggedy Man", and the Ford he drives, which is intended to be a reference to the Ford Falcon XB GT, better known to Mad Max fans as the Pursuit Special.

Thanks for reading,  
Geist.


	2. Part IV: The Labyrinth

**Disclaimer:** Do I give off the impression that I own this series? If so, I'm terribly sorry for misleading you.

 **Summary** : Harry won the battle, but lost the only war that ever mattered. Fifteen years later, he sets out to find absolution. Post-Apocalyptic AU. Inspired by the older Mad Max movies.

* * *

Morning in the Land of Nod

* * *

Part Four: The Labyrinth

* * *

Brown eyes stared inquisitively at him.

"Harry, you look unwell."

He smiled wryly, and subconsciously stepped closer to her, so that he could inhale as much of her familiar flowery fragrance as possible.

"I _feel_ unwell," he admitted.

They stood on the ramparts of some castle from a far-off memory. Harry couldn't quite place it: it seemed familiar, but distorted: its angles wrong, its dimensions off. Like he was viewing it through a kaleidoscope, or a hall of mirrors. But one thing stood out especially: Green.

A wide swath of green down at the base of the castle, stretching as far as the eye could see, disappearing into a great and dark forest. All that green, much too beautiful too bear.

Arms looped round him, and Harry was caught in a tender embrace, and the flowery scent invaded his nostrils like a pleasant army.

"I'm sorry, Harry. I never wanted such a future for you."

Harry didn't reply.

"I had hoped... I had hoped things would turn out well, in the end," she sighed sadly.

"We all hoped. But hope doesn't save the world, and it doesn't bring back the dead."

A silence fell over the two for one halting moment, before she looked up with those luminous eyes of hers: "Is that why you left me behind?" she asked, and the question rocked around his brain before settling in his stomach, a pit of pure guilt.

He looked away. He didn't have to say anything; she already knew the answer: It was why he left _everyone_ behind.

"Alone. Miserable. You've become quite the fiend," she said; the words were harsh, but her tone was anything but that.

"Aye" he agreed, after a time, "a real diamond dog."

She smiled a humourless smile and they moved to the edge of the ramparts to watch the dead forest sway ominously in the distance.

"But you've brought someone else with you. A girl. Young, innocent..." she said quietly, and he remembered the girl: bright, airy, lively; such a vibrant oxymoron in a world as desolate this wasteland. She was something special, something that had to be protected.

Harry faced the woman he loved, the woman he left to die so long ago, and nodded.

She licked her cherry red lips, and spoke once more, careful and measured: "Are you prepared to have her blood on your hands, too?"

And then, the world turned to horror.

He was no longer holding a grown woman who held the shattered pieces of his heart, but a little, auburn-haired girl, limp and lifeless, her blood on his hands. The castle around him burned, and suddenly, there was no green, but miles and miles of harsh, grainy gold and fire, delicate fire. And there was that smell, that horrible smell of rotting bodies stacked atop one another, belonging to all those he had failed.

He shook the girl, vainly trying to rouse her limp form, but the hard truth soon settled on him as the fire rose: she was just another one for the pile.

The flames licked at the nape of his neck; demons played sawing tunes on spectral pianos, joined by a chorus of imps and ghouls, as the devil's nebulous form floated above the fiery pit and grasped for his heart with a gnarled, phantasmal set of claws. And the man who had once gone by Harry Potter suddenly jittered awake in the driver's seat of the faithful Ford that had taken Rose and himself this far in their continental roadtrip. Immediately, he looked back and found Rose huddled under the blankets in the backseat, still soundly asleep.

Harry allowed himself a sigh of relief.

They had been together for over a month now. He had counted the days. Progress was slow-going toward the east, caught in the dunes as they were; contending with looters, sandstorms, and drifting from shantytown to shantytown, but Harry and Rose remained undaunted. They used the extra time to turn the girl from a novice at magic to a proper wasteland witch; Harry had put his charge on an accelerated course for the magic he had once learned in a school, so very long ago. After all, Rose lived in a savage world; she had no need to learn how to transfigure mice into flowers, or how to brew dreamless sleep potions. Instead, she needed to know how to transfigure rocks into bullets, how to stun, blast, and levitate her way out of any situation. And Harry resolved to help in any way he could.

So far, Rose hadn't disappointed. She was smart, kind, and vivacious, quick to learn magic; Rose was everything Harry had hoped his own daughter might have become, if he ever had a child. But, he would never admit such a thing to her: Rose had a bit of a jester's personality in her, alongside the serious, studious side, and she would be unlikely to let Harry live such a compliment down.

So, instead he reached over the seat and shook her shoulder to rouse the young girl.

Of course, she wouldn't wake. He tried several times, but, as always, she slept like the dead. One thing Harry had quickly learned about his charge was that she wasn't one much for early mornings. But, unfortunately for Rose, Harry wasn't one much for waiting on other people.

Uncorking his canteen, he poured lukewarm water down onto her face, which did the trick. Coughing and sputtering, Rose shot up, now wide awake:

"I'm up! I'm up!" she shouted wildly, and scrambled up, hoping to avoid another aquatic attack.

"Morning, sprog," Harry greeted kindly. The only response he received was a glare that could give Severus Snape a run for his money. Instead, Rose jammed her spectacles on with surprising ferocity after wiping her face, and clambered over the gearbox to the passenger's seat, where she crossed her arms and continued her one-sided glaring contest with Harry.

"Water?" he asked innocently, offering the canteen to her.

Rose practically growled as she snatched it out of his hands and drank greedily from it. "So," she said, after taking her fill, "what are we doing today?"

"We'll spending all day in the car. We might be doing it for a few days."

"And then what?"

"Then we meet an old friend," Harry said cryptically. "Take a handful of sand, and levitate it while we drive."

"For how long?"

"One hour. Drop it, and you start over."

The girl let out a great sigh. "How is that supposed to help me learn magic? You taught me the levitation spell _ages_ ago!"

"It'll help you learn patience. Now stop complaining, and do it."

Sullenly, Rose raised her wand, the holly-and-phoenix-feather one that used to belong to Harry, and waved it outside the open window of the car. A fine handful of sand swirled up and inside the cabin, forming and reforming itself into an ever shifting sphere that the girl had to pay a surprising amount of attention to. While the exercise did help Rose achieve a better grasp of her own power, Harry would be lying if he said he did not have an ulterior motive: Rose, as brilliant as she could be, was, like many girls her age, very chatty. Conversely, Harry was a very solitary man used to silence, and sometimes even he needed a reprieve from her incessantly inquisitive nature.

So they drove past dunes and old, broken down homes as Rose concentrated on the sphere of sand and Harry concentrated on the road, with one watchful eye always on the lookout for looters, raiders, or old _friends_ looking to settle a score.

Some twenty minutes into the drive, Rose found a colossal, collapsed bridge more interesting than her levitating sand, and, unsurprisingly, lost control of her spell. With a tragic and clearly exaggerated pained look, she turned to her unconventional tutor with doe eyes, hoping she could distract him from her failure.

She could not.

"Start over," Harry said shortly, eyes never leaving the road.

"But-" Rose began vainly, but The Raggedy Man quickly silenced her with one sharp, emerald glare. " _Fiiiine_ ," she murmured with a long-suffering groan, the tips of her ears going red, as she pointed the wand at her feet where the sand had collapsed and reformed the sphere.

"'Attagirl," the man praised his charge blandly.

They rode in silence for ten minutes, but, as usual, Rose's questioning nature won out in the end: "Harry," she said quietly, biting her lip.

Harry turned, and was struck dumb by it.

"Harry?" Rose asked, inquisitiveness replaced by concern. "Are you okay?" Harry only then realised they had coasted to a stop.

The black-haired man blinked, shook his head, and scratched his beard, before returning the gear lever to its rightful place. "Ah, sorry, sprog... you just happened to remind me of someone."

"I did? Who?"

"Just an old friend," Harry replied quickly, much too quickly for his liking. Rose was smart to catch onto it, so she tactfully avoided asking any more questions about the old friend she reminded him of. She returned to her ball of sand for a short time, before changing tack:

"What was the world like?" she asked. "You know, before all the sand?"

Harry didn't respond immediately. In fact, he didn't say anything for nearly a minute after Rose first posed the question. And, thinking he hadn't heard her, Rose made to ask once more when Harry suddenly spoke:

"Green," he replied in his usual brusque manner. "Lots of green. And the people were a lot nicer."

"Were they?"

"The world was... less savage. People didn't fear for their lives."

"Really? No killing?"

"People were killed back then," Harry answered, "but it wasn't common, and it wasn't something you had to worry about regularly. It was only after that we became the way we are now."

"What do you mean?"

Harry turned and regarded the auburn-haired girl seriously. "After the end. Some of us became stronger, and tried to help; some went insane; others... some people just ran away from their problems, thinking that would solve them."

"Which kind were you?"

"I don't know," Harry admitted honestly, "maybe all three."

Rose nodded, with an air of understanding that could only come from someone as innocent as a child, and returned to her ball of sand with renewed vigour. Things remained silent in the cabin for a long while afterward.

* * *

Some hours later, they came across a curious sight. It was at the mouth of a valley, two sheer cliff faces jutting outward and upward on either side of them. And there, in the sand, a car not unlike their own, toppled over and waiting to be looted. The vehicle looked shiny, and new, too well-kept to be another wastelander's car:

"That's a trap if I've ever seen one," Harry said quietly.

Rose looked up from her ball of sand, the sixth one she had formed. "What should we do?" she asked.

"Move forward. Cautiously."

And Harry did exactly that; inching the nose of the Ford onward past the overturned vehicle. Predictably, no one was inside it, but Harry suppressed his scavenging urges and kept a keen eye out along the ridges and shadowy places of the cliffs.

The spell came quite suddenly. One moment, Harry and Rose carefully scanned their surroundings, the next, a blast of red rocked the cabin: Harry grit his teeth and Rose screamed soundlessly as the explosion played out in front of them, nearly generating enough force to topple the Ford, as the other car at the entrance to the little gully had been.

Accompanying that explosion, people seemed to phase out of the ether, all along the ridges. There were a dozen Harry could see, and likely even more that he couldn't.

"How did they do that?" Rose demanded, shocked. "Appear out of thin air like that?"

"Magic."

"Are they-?"

"Yes. And that makes them incredibly dangerous."

Instead of letting the fear she no doubt felt show, Rose steeled herself and asked quietly: "What do you need me to do?" It almost made Harry proud, but her resolve alone wasn't going to keep them alive:

"Nothing at the moment," he replied. "Just follow their instructions until you see an opening."

"A-are you sure?"

Another explosion rocked the cabin, this time getting closer. "Yeah," deadpanned Harry. "I think I am."

"Okay."

"Attagirl," Harry said, with more conviction this time than the last, at they waited for the billowing smoke in front of them, courtesy of the demolition man among the wizards and witches of the ridge, to clear up.

Up from the crest of the right cliff, a feminine figure, wreathed in white, with long, flowing blonde hair stepped off the edge into the deep fissure and fell to the earth. Harry blinked in confusion as she sailed down and none of her companions reacted, and Rose's tiny hand gripped his forearm in fear for the woman. Had Harry the time to ponder it, he would have marveled at Rose's compassion for a woman who, up until she decided suicide was a better option, had been attacking them.

It was only some seconds later that either Harry or Rose noticed that somehow, the woman had slowed in mid-air and hung in it, like she was suspended from wires, as she descended slowly down and made quite a soft landing against the sand at the bottom of the gully. Despite the ease of her landing, she remained in a somewhat odd position, one knee resting against the ground and the other bent as though swearing fealty or proposing marriage. She rose like an automaton, stiff and mechanical, and Harry could almost picture the whirr of cogs and machinery behind that flesh-and-blood skin-sack.

A stick, not unlike the one Rose gripped tightly in one of her hands, raised and pointed at them, before quickly flicking upward twice, beckoning them from the car.

"Sprog," said Harry seriously, shotgun in one hand, revolver in the other, "stay in the car. Don't come out unless you have to. I'll try and take care of them." Harry cautiously exited the car, raising the sawed-off shotgun the moment he stepped outside. There was rustling above on the ridges as the other wizards and witches trained their wands on Harry.

Harry stepped closer to the woman, shotgun aimed straight at her beautiful face. Her golden brows furrowed, and they faced off: a woman wielding wood and the very power of god, and a man armed with steel and all the resultant ingenuity of mankind.

But they did not clash; instead, the woman spoke: "State your business, wanderer," she said with a strong German accent, her words harsh, but measured.

"Just passing through," Harry replied evasively, and one would expect demurely, but his tone carried venom enough to kill a man.

"Muggle?"

The Raggedy Man's eyes narrowed. "Squib."

Blue eyes met green, then stared past the gruff, scared visage of the man who once went by Harry Potter. "Who is that?" the woman growled, indicating Rose, still in the cabin of the car.

The Raggedy Man chose not to respond.

A red light swirled at the tip of a tightly-held wand, as the sound of a gun cocking reverberated throughout the chasm. They stood for a few tense seconds, waiting to see who would fire first, when the Ford's passenger-side door banged open and shut in a matter of seconds and the patter of small boots came rushing up toward them. Suddenly, a short mass of wild auburn hair stood protectively in front of Harry: Rose trained Harry's old holly-and-phoenix-feather wand on the blonde, who looked taken aback at the sudden appearance of a child.

"Sprog," Harry warned lowly.

"Shush," Rose whispered back, "you said it yourself, these people are magic, and they outnumber us. You need help."

Annoyed as he was by it, Harry had to admit Rose spoke sense. "At least get behind me," he entreated.

Rose chose not to respond.

The hot sun reached its zenith and beat down on the three, unforgiving as it always was. It illuminated the blonde's hair, like fine foils of gold swaying lightly in the breeze. But the woman did not pay attention to the sun, her eyebrows once more creased at the sight of the little witch trying to protect the man with the gun.

"Little one," she asked abruptly, as if sensing something. Harry knew immediately that the woman could tell what Rose was. "You are one of us, are you not?"

Rose looked to Harry, who shrugged and kept his shotgun aimed at the other witch, before turning back and nodding curtly to the woman.

"Can you tell me who this man is to you?"

"He's my father," Rose lied without missing a beat.

The other woman squinted at Rose and stepped closer to inspect her, mindful of her guardian's shotgun, still cocked and aimed at her. "She must take after her mother," she said, looking from Rose to Harry and back, "Ah. I see it now. It's in the cheekbones."

The blonde then nodded, seemingly satisfied with the little girl's answer, and turned around which inadvertently gave Harry a perfect shot at her. But, the chance came and went, as the blonde raised an arm to her reinforcements along the ridge, all of whom promptly put their wands away at the woman's order. When she sheathed her wand, Harry set about holstering the shotgun, and placed the revolver in his jacket pocket.

"You shouldn't be here," the woman said to Harry as she turned around, "you must be going to Berlin."

Harry quirked a brow, and Rose cocked her head in confusion. "Berlin? We're going to Berl-?"

"The only 'civilised' city in all of Western Europe," the blonde cut across Rose, "everyone who comes here is going to Berlin."

"And where are we now?" Rose asked of the woman as her companions one by one jumped off the cliff's edge, just as their leader had done, and slowly glided to a stop.

"You and your father have stumbled across The Labyrinth, Little One, a small town of magical refugees," said the leader of wizards and witches, her tone much kinder to Rose than it had ever been to Harry.

"Refugees?" questioned Harry. "Why don't you just go to Berlin?"

"Not safe anymore, it seems. Berlin has become a dangerous place for people like us," the blonde said cryptically.

Rose, however, had a different question. "Why is it called 'Labyrinth'?"

"Try to leave without our permission, and you'll soon find out," she said kindly, though the veiled threat was obvious even to a child like Rose.

Soon, the main contingent of magicals wandered over to the trio, all whispering hurriedly to one another as they did so. "What are we all so chatty about?" the woman asked, annoyed at the lack of discipline from the others.

One man stepped forward, part of the small contingent of the group that spoke English over German, and jabbed an accusing finger at Harry. "That face! I'd recognise it anywhere! It's Halloween Jack!"

"Halloween Jack?" Rose asked Harry curiously; the black-haired man grit his teeth:

"A stupid nickname," he grunted.

The woman in white, the witch who had tested them, regarded the accuser seriously. "You're sure of this?"

"As ever! I never forget a face! He worked with The Duke all those years ago, smuggling people into the city!"

"And you, Wanderer? Are you this... Halloween Jack?" Harry stared back at the woman as she spoke; when she received no answer, she tutted softly. "No matter, your silence already told us."

"But he's a squib," countered one of the other English speaking wizards, "Halloween Jack was one of us."

"I'm telling you, I never forget a face! He's the one!" countered the first man.

"The Healer knew Halloween Jack," said still another, a woman. "Bring the two back to the village and present them. Healer will tell us if he is the one."

The blonde woman froze at the last woman's words, before she turned back to them and nodded. Her men were quick to follow her orders, turning on their heels and marching away from them, in the opposite direction from where Harry and Rose had come from. The blonde regarded the duo carefully as they left.

"Get into your tin can," she said, "if you try to run, I will destroy both you and your daughter, am I clear?

"Crystal."

"Good. Soon, The Healer will determine the truth of this all."

* * *

The camp they came to was lodged in a valley created by two high dunes. It was a strategic position and Harry could tell that there were further, arcane protections around the whole of the encampment. The rumbling engine of Harry's car seemed to attract other wizards and witches like moths to a flame; they came out of huts and bungalows, and watched the lumbering machine roll its way up behind the contingent of warriors Harry and Rose had encountered earlier:

"Are they not used to cars?" Rose asked, indicating the befuddled look on their faces.

"Afraid of muggles using them to come hunt them down," Harry answered back.

The little witch sighed and began twirling the holly-and-phoenix-feather wand in her fingers. "Berlin, huh?"

"Yeah. But it's just a rest stop."

"I went to Berlin once. With mum and dad..." Rose trailed off, and Harry waited for to continue, but she contented to look out the window instead. Harry understood her reticence to speak further; they were fresh wounds. He was the same way. Suddenly, however, Rose turned back to Harry. "Why don't you ever do magic?"

"What?" Harry asked as they pulled fully into the camp, and the blonde woman from the gully instructed them to park in an empty space close to the centre of the camp.

"This wand. It's yours, isn't it? But you always say you're a squib."

"Can't do magic," Harry replied; his non-answer earned a glower from Rose. "I could. Once. Not anymore," he amended, for the girl's sake.

"Why not?" asked Rose, moving her head so she could maintain direct eye contact with her guardian.

Harry looked away. "Dunno," he answered evasively, "bad luck?"

It was much too stupid an answer for someone as smart as Rose to accept, regardless of how young she was. But, for the time being, she clamped her mouth shut and let Harry be as they parked. As the elder man engaged the parking brake, Rose stepped out into the hot, mid-morning sun, and stared at all the huts and tents dotting the valley between the dunes.

Harry soon came out behind her, and, automatically, Rose went to his side and made to grasp his hand in her own.

"They sleep in tents?" she asked quietly. "That must be uncomfortable out here."

Harry snorted shortly. "We sleep in a rusty metal box, sprog. Believe me when I say those tents are a _lot_ more comfortable than you think."

The man wagered his charge didn't quite believe him, but he wasn't going to waste too much energy trying to convince her. After all, seeing was believing. They walked further into the compound, hand-in-hand, increasingly unnerved by the amount of witches and wizards poking their heads out of those very same tents to gawk. Further ahead was a coterie of magicals, numbering around 25, if Harry's counting wasn't off; as they came closer, the group parted like the sea, and that very same blonde woman in white flowed out from them.

She stepped up to Harry, who cut an imposing figure in black, and swiftly motioned for the two to follow. "Come with me," she said mechanically, and whirled on her heel before receiving an answer.

Harry and Rose shrugged at each other, deciding then to follow. As they trailed behind her, Harry's eye fell to her figure. She might have been a psychotic witch hellbent on killing any passersby, but she knew how to wear a set of robes. Almost immediately, he felt a light sting at his hand, and just barely refrained from yelping as he turned to find Rose glowering at him with his own wand pointed at his hand. She frowned and shook a finger at him as though he were a naughty schoolboy caught cheating on an exam.

With Rose keeping a much more watchful eye on The Raggedy Man's roving eye, they walked on in silence, eventually coming to a somewhat larger tent near the outskirts of the wizard camp. The woman in white stomped up to the entrance, and then stood aside, indicating for the outsiders to go in first. Rose made to head inside, but Harry stopped her with a hand on her shoulder; she looked up and saw him walk over to the woman:

"Do whatever you want to me, but if you hurt the girl, I _will_ cut you heart out."

The woman looked unfazed. " _You_ have nothing to worry about right now. You will, if you threaten me again."

Both man and woman stared each other down for a long moment, until Rose tugged on her guardian's gloved hand. "Harry," she said, "let's just go in."

He weighed the options he had, and quickly realised he had no real play but to follow the woman's instructions for now, and led Rose into the tent by the hand. Instantly, Rose marveled:

"Wow!" she exclaimed. "I'd no idea it was this... this..."

"Big?" Harry quipped back, a light smile on his rugged face.

And it was big. The tent, which was somewhat large for a muggle tent on the outside, had morphed into a large living space that could comfortably house at least five or six people.

"This is amazing," Rose said, reaching down to touch rich, Persian carpets, which was a luxury Harry hadn't seen since long before the wasteland.

Harry nodded. "What I wouldn't give to have one of these tents."

But their not-so-quiet astonishment came to a quick close, as the woman came up from behind them and pointed the two to a door at the end of the room. "Through there," she said. "That is where you will meet The Healer."

Rose gave off an unladylike snort. "Someone likes mystery."

Harry allowed himself a tiny smile at the girl's observation as he led her to the door. "Should we knock, or just go in?" he asked, turning back to the woman, only to find she had disappeared out the front of the tent. "Right then," he murmured to himself, "what do you think, sprog?"

"May as well knock, I s'pose."

"Do the honours, then."

Rose nodded, and rapped her knuckles sharply against the modest wooden door. From behind it, a voice called out: "It's open!"

Harry took point and went inside first, keeping Rose firmly behind him as a bright, airy room seemed to flare out from the dark mystery of that door. Rose immediately oohed her ahead of Harry, unmindful of his cautioning hand, as she examined bookshelves, reached down to touch plush, velvety rugs, and marveled over a large tapestry of a golden-armoured man fighting a boar with a spear, which hung to their right and took up most of the space on the canvas wall. Harry, however, kept his eyes off the myriad knick-knacks and distractions, and kept his focus forward, at a modest writing desk facing away from them.

Seated in a chair at that table, was a woman with long, blonde hair. Harry craned his neck, vainly trying to create an angle whereby he might see her face as they came closer. Something didn't feel right; Harry took Rose's hand in his own and brought the other to the handle of his shotgun, sitting cold in its holster.

"Stop," commanded the woman, and Harry stopped dead.

But it wasn't her command that stopped him. It was that voice. That familiar voice. He hadn't heard it in years, but he never forgot.

The blonde woman stood.

"They say you are Halloween Jack," she continued, back still facing Harry and Rose.

The auburn-haired girl tugged at Harry's arm in alarm, but her mentor couldn't respond: his mouth went dry, his breathing went shallow. _It couldn't be; it couldn't be,_ he thought wildly.

"But that you have no magic," the blonde said with an air of amusement. "Some think that makes you... an impostor."

The woman turned, and all Harry's worst fears were confirmed:

"But, we both know, that proves you are him. Isn't that right, Harry?"

Harry's grip on his shotgun tightened. "I thought you died."

She smiled, revealing perfect, pearly teeth. "Did you?"

He nodded. "A long time ago."

"Not me," she answered quickly, and sadness flitted across her pretty face. "Not me."

"Fleur-"

"My husband. My daughter. But not me," she drew herself up to full height. "Nor you, it seems."

Harry allowed himself a small, humourless grin. "Halfway there."

Fleur Weasley, or, perhaps Delacour once more, returned Harry's smile and produced her wand. Rose immediately went for her own, only to be stopped by the cautioning arm she had spent so much of the day ignoring:

"Relax, sprog; she's not going to hurt us."

Fleur blinked, as if noticing Rose for the first time. "Sprog? _And_ your wand?" she asked, " _Pardonnez-moi_ , but I never took you for a nurturer."

Whatever answer it was that Fleur expected, she never received it, only facing an unnerving blank look from the scarred man, and a timid approximation of it from his little charge. Sighing, the blonde waved her wand in the air, and from the ether came furniture: a large, comfy ottoman plunked right in front of the wandering duo, and Fleur smilingly beckoned for them to sit:

"Come," she said, "we have much to discuss."

"Like what?" Harry asked. He hadn't seen the attractive Frenchwoman in nearly ten years, and now that he had seen her again, he was eager to leave. His exile was self-imposed for a reason, and Harry was at loathe to see it broken so unceremoniously.

The Prophet's words came back to him: _Absolution_ , he had said. Harry would find absolution by traveling east, and seeking the Queen of Whispers. Absolution. The word echoed around his skull like a foghorn as he stared unseeingly at Fleur.

The blonde seemed to take no notice of him, as she leaned back, resting her rump against the lip of her writing desk:

"Berlin, Harry," she said. "we're going to discuss _Berlin_."

* * *

A/N: This may seem like a weird place to stop, but it will make more sense in the coming chapters. As for the chapters themselves; this was originally planned to be three chapters total, but I've tinkered with the story idea for the past month, and it's grown to approximately five chapters, though the rest of the chapters will be significantly longer than this one.

 **Chapter Notes :**

 **David Bowie:** At the time I started writing this fic, the whole Berlin section was supposed to be a reference Bowie simply because he was one of my favorite musicians of all time. In light of his death, the use of Halloween Jack, The Duke, Diamond Dogs, the fact that Berlin plays a central role, The Labyrinth, etc. are now my pitiful homage to the late, great David Bowie. Prepare for many, many more Bowieisms once Berlin plays more prominently into fic.

 **Halloween Jack:** Originally, the Bowie persona I had chosen for Harry was Ziggy Stardust, but Halloween Jack, a character who lives on top of the Manhattan-Chase building, commanding a pack of feral scavengers known as the Diamond Dogs after the apocalypse, was much more fitting, I feel. I also like the almost Homerian idea of epithets, or nicknames: that Harry is constantly referred to as something other than his name-The Raggedy Man in some places, Halloween Jack in others.

 **The Healer:** Some of you might not like how Harry has now stumbled into both Rose and Fleur, but remember, the only reason Harry met them is because he's following the prophecy of the Voldemort-eating prophet in the first chapter. It's more like destiny, than sheer dumb luck. They won't be the last of the canon characters Harry ends up bumping into on this little journey.

Next chapter: Smuggling, sneaking, and a healthy dose of unfiltered ultraviolence.

Thanks for reading!  
Geist.


End file.
